Dozens of federal agents raided the Southern California homes of three immigration activists in what their attorney claimed was part of a campaign to harass and intimidate advocacy groups that have organized neighborhood watches.The raids on the four locations took place on Wednesday morning and included the home of one member of the volunteer group VC Defensa. The member claimed agents held him and his mother at gunpoint for two hours while they confiscated his devices and clothing items that bore the logo of the group. Reem Yassin, the watch group’s attorney, described the raids as “fishing expeditions” that used “baseless” search warrants. "These raids are nothing more than an intimidation tactic to suppress free speech,” he said at a Thursday press conference.• Incest California dad’s haunting texts after daughter killed herself following abuse• Convicted child predator goes missing in California before judge issues prison sentenceYassin added that the incidents were part of a year-long pattern in which federal agents have targeted more than 50 people associated with the group with arrests, raids, car ramming, pepper-spraying, and following them home. VC Defensa, based in Ventura County, is one of many neighborhood groups across the U.S. known to record and monitor Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Immigration agents have been documented targeting observers with violence while they film immigration activities, most notably killing legal observers Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota this winter. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed in a statement to the Los Angeles Times that search warrants had been executed at locations related to VC Defensa.“On May 13, [Homeland Security Investigations] executed several search warrants on individuals associated with an anti-ICE organization,” a Homeland Security spokesperson told the L.A. Times in an email. “Several members of this organization have been previously arrested for ambushing federal law enforcement and destruction of government property. Several items were seized as part of the search warrants.”The members were arrested last October in connection with a protest over massive immigration raids at a California cannabis greenhouse in July, which led to the death of a farm worker, officers' deployment of less-lethal projectiles at protestors, and hundreds of arrests. Leo Martinez, whose home was one of the four locations targeted by agents on Wednesday morning, said that while the group publishes images and videos of its operations, it adheres to the law when doing so.“We have nothing to hide,” Martinez told the L.A. Times. “If they had access to all of our messaging going back to the beginning, there’s nothing in there.”Still, Martinez claimed he and fellow VC Defensa members have been the targets of frequent attacks by federal agents for months. He and others have been arrested and detained, including one incident in which agents were filmed appearing to ram his vehicle, the L.A. Times reported.The federal agents claimed Martinez was the aggressor in the incident, but neither Martinez nor other group members have faced charges in connection with their activities. “We don’t do anything other than alert the community that ICE officers are there,” he told the L.A. Times. “We have to adhere to the law because we know if we cross that line, even a fraction for a bit, we know they’ll crush us," Martinez added. Yassin said a group of lawyers is preparing a civil lawsuit accusing the federal officers of violating the volunteers' constitutional rights.It would join many similar lawsuits around the U.S. claiming that immigration agents have violated the Constitution by targeting, intimidating, or otherwise unlawfully interacting with activists, observers, and people suspected to be undocumented immigrants. A New York Times report from March revealed a Department of Homeland Security task force that was investigating VC Defensa as part of an effort to build legal cases against protestors, who the Trump administration has broadly accused of organizing left-wing terrorist conspiracies.Since last year, hundreds of protesters across the U.S. have been arrested and charged with assaulting or impeding immigration officers during their operations, but federal prosecutors have largely failed to secure convictions. Officers' testimony about the incidents is frequently contradicted by bystander video evidence, including in Southern California.